‘Well, I’m not taking part in any initiation or rites of passage.’
Each of them had laughed.
‘Frank Booth is reported to be a member. I will ask him to sponsor us.’
A week later they were given a date, a time and a place, a small break in a case that was baffling. Girls were ruined all the time in London, for reasons of economics, for the want of food, for a roof over the head of a child born out of wedlock. But they were seldom so brutally hurt.
Sandrine. He remembered her ruined hand and the fear in her face when he had first met her.
The rage inside him began to build. Back then Cassandra Northrup had never given him any glimpse of an identity, though with each and every day in her company questions had woven their way into the little that she told him.
The first night had been the worst. She had cried behind him in small sobs, unstoppable over miles of walking in the dark. He had not helped her because he couldn’t. The wound in his side had ached like the devil, fiery-hot and prickling, and by midnight he knew that he would have to rest.
Throwing down the few things he had taken from the cart after abandoning it many miles back, he leaned against a tree, the bark of its trunk firm behind him. Already the whirling circles of giddiness threatened, the ache at his hip sending pins and needles into his chest.
The girl sat on the other side of the small clearing, tucked into a stiff and inconsolable shape.
‘You are safer than you were before. I said I would not hurt you.’ He couldn’t understand her weeping.
‘I killed a man.’
‘He was about to rape you.’ Nat’s heart sank at the implications of her guilt. God, how long had it been since he had felt anything remotely similar? He wished he had been the one to slide a knife into the French miscreant, for he would have gutted him and enjoyed watching him die. Slowly.
Her hands crossed her heart and her lips moved as if reciting a prayer.
Had the bullet wound not hurt as much he might have laughed, might have crossed the space between them and shaken her into sense. But he could only sit and watch and try to mitigate his pain.
‘I am sure that the wrath of God takes intent into account.’
‘Oh, I intended to kill him.’ Honestly said. Given back in a second and no hesitation in it.
‘I was thinking more of your assailant’s purpose. I do not think Monsieur Baudoin would have been gentle with you.’
‘Yet two wrongs do not make a right?’
He closed his eyes and felt the bloom of fatigue, irritation rising at her unreasonableness. ‘If you had not killed him, I would have. One way or another he would have been dead. If it helps, pretend I did it.’
‘Who are you?’ The green in her eyes under moonlight matched the dark of the trees. In the daylight they were bluer, changeable.
‘Nathanael Colbert. A friend.’ Barked out, none of the empathy he knew she wanted held within the word. She remained silent, a small broken shape in the gloom, tucked up against bracken, the holes in the leather soles of her shoes easily seen from this angle. ‘Why the hell were you there in the first place?’
He did not think she would answer as the wind came through into the hollow, its keening sound as plaintive as her voice.
‘They caught us a long time ago.’ He saw her counting on her fingertips as she said it, the frown upon her brow deepening. Months? Years?
‘Us?’
He had seen no other sign of captives.
‘Celeste and I.’
Hell. Another girl. ‘Where is she?’
‘Dead.’ The flat anger in her voice was cold.
‘Recently?’
She nodded, her expression gleamed in sadness. She had old bruises across her cheek and new ones on her hand. In the parting of her hair when her cap had been dislodged he had seen the opaque scar of a wound that could have so easily killed her.
As damaged as he was.
Tonight he did not have the energy to know more of her story and the thin wanness was dispiriting. If they could have a drink things would be better, but the flask he had brought with him was long since empty.
‘Can you hear that stream?’
She nodded.
‘We need water...?’
He left the words as a question. No amount of want in the world could get him standing. He had lost too much blood and he knew it.
‘Do you have the flask?’
‘Here.’
When she took it and left he closed his eyes and tried to find some balance in the silence. He wanted to tend to himself, but he would need water to do that. And fire. He wondered if the young French captive would be able to follow his instructions when she returned.
He also wondered just exactly how those at Nay had gained their information on the identity and movements of a British agent who had long been a part of the fabric of French country life.
* * *
It was quiet in the trees and all the grief of losing Celeste flooded back. Her cousin’s body rounded with child. Her eyes lifeless. The pain of it surged into Cassie’s throat, blocking breath, and she stopped to lean against a tree. The anguish of life and death. What was it the man who sat in the clearing wrapped in bandages had said?
Killing is easy. It’s the living that is difficult.
Perhaps, after all, he was right. Perhaps Celeste had known that, too, and put an end to all that she had loathed, taking the child to a place that was better but leaving her here alone.
Alone in a world where everything looked bleak. Bleaker than bleak even under the light of a small moon, the trickle of water at her feet running into the tattered remains of her boots and wetting her toes. The cold revived a little of her fight, reminded her how in the whole of those eight terrible months she had not given up, had not surrendered. She wished the stream might have been deeper so that she could have simply stripped off and washed away sin. A baptism. A renewal. A place to begin yet again and survive.
The flask in hand reminded her of purpose and she knelt to the water.
Her companion looked sick, the crusted blood beneath his nails reflected in the red upon his clothes, sodden through the layers of bandage. Without proper medicine how could he live? Water would clean the wound, but what could be done for any badness that might follow? The shape of leaves in the moonlight on the other side of the river suddenly caught her attention. Maudeline. Her mother had used this very plant in her concoctions. An astringent, she had said. A cleanser. A natural gift from the hands of a God who placed his medicines where they were most needed.
The small bank was easy to climb and, taking a handful of the plant, she stripped away the woody stems, the minty scent adding certainty to her discovery. She remembered this fresh sweet smell from Alysa’s rooms and was heartened by the fact. The work of finding enough leaves and tucking them into her pocket took all her concentration, purpose giving energy. A small absolution. A task she had done many hundreds of times under the guidance of her mother.
An anchor to the familiar amidst all that was foreign. She needed this stranger in a land she held no measure of and he needed her. An equal support. It had been so long since she had felt any such worthiness.
He was asleep when she returned, though the quiet fall of her feet woke him.
‘I have maudeline for your injury.’ Bringing out the leaves, she began to crush them between her fingers, mixing them to a paste with the water on a smooth rock she had wiped down before using. She saw how he watched her, his grey eyes never